Will The BlackBerry Twitter Client Social Scope Ever Come Out Of Beta?

When it comes to BlackBerry Twitter clients, there certainly is no shortage of options for you to choose from. Unfortunately, however, the BlackBerry Twitter client considered by many to be the best, Social Scope, has been in closed beta for what seems like the past couple of years and a production release, or, even an open beta available to whomever wishes to download it is no where in sight.

Will Social Scope ever come out of beta?

For those of you lucky enough to have the latest version, is it worth the wait? Personally, I’ve moved on a while ago. The Official Twitter for BlackBerry client is my BlackBerry Twitter app of choice and I have UberTwitter installed as well. Ever now and again, however, I hear some say how awesome Social Scope is and it makes me wonder why they haven’t released it yet.

I found the “official” Twitter client to be a serious battery drain over a few days of testing. I’ve used UberTwitter, TwitterBerry, TinyTwitter…and SocialScope is the best by far. The best thing about it is having Facebook & Twitter all together in one big stream, being able to comment on both status updates and other types of wall posts without dumping to the mobile browser…etc. Saves me from the painfully awful official BlackBerry Facebook app.

Whenever they bring it out of this closed beta, I’m sure it will wind up the #1 Twitter client on BlackBerry, and any other platform they decide to release it to. I have no idea why it’s still in a closed beta, or in beta at all. The last update seems polished enough to be a finished product.

OK, here is my totally random testing of the Twitter for BlackBerry app:

1) I killed every other app in the background I wasn’t planning on using. Logged out and exited SocialScope, FourSquare, Facebook for BlackBerry, and the Clock (which are all usually running for me).

2) Signed into Twitter for BlackBerry – it loaded smooth.

3) I used my phone as I normally would. From about 10:45am to now, starting with a fully charged battery, I am at 40%. I was on the phone for about 1 hour in total, and sent about a dozen SMS text messages and a few BBMs. Even a 2 hour phone call from a fully battery wouldn’t pull me below 50%, 1 hour usually sucks about 20% out of the phone. I never once used the mobile browser or opened up any other application.

I noticed in between phone calls, while I wasn’t doing anything else on the phone, the “receive” arrow kept popping up, nearly constantly. I had set Twitter for BlackBerry to update every 15 minutes, just like I do with SocialScope. I’ve never seen this “receive” ghost before, and it stopped after I exited and logged off Twitter for BlackBerry.

Twitter for BlackBerry also seems to have eaten a few Tweets which I know were sent and/or received, but they are not either not showing on my timeline and/or never showed up as @ replies to the people I sent them too.

While it certainly is a nice LOOKING Twitter app, I’m going to have to give the big thumbs down on Twitter for BlackBerry. Again. LoL

Yes, SocialScope supports multiple Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. They are all merged together into one stream, and each one also gets its own tab. You can also update all of them at once or as many at a time as you want to.

Just curious, when BlackBerry OS6 comes out, there seems to be much better integration with social sites like twitter and FaceBook. I wonder how much that will hurt SociaLScopes “edge” over the other solutions out there.

Right now though, I agree, SocialScope is THE choice for anyone who uses both Twitter and Facebook. If you only have one account, it is still nice but the upsides are much less.